The (Re-)Discovery

I was determined to find "The Skull" on this weekend, but that hadn't help me find it yet. I knew if I had to search every square foot of the east side of the park, I was going to find it. So I picked out a route that I had done before, but not looking for "The Skull". I did not know if there were any hoodoos on this route, but I thought I would give it a thorough look regardless. It ended up being an excellent hike on the east side of the park, but did not yield any skull like formations. This was getting frustrating. I finally resorted to looking at Google Earth.

There were still some areas left that I had not thoroughly explored, but I was not sure if there were any hoodoos with iron concretions at these spots. Google Earth has vastly improved from when I started to use it years ago. I could see for sure, there were some iron concretions in these exact spots. The next day, I was back at it and this time I could smell victory. I did not have to go far, only about 15 minutes from the car before I could look up to see some iron concreted hoodoos rising above me. I went up a steep slope that took a slight bit of route finding to find the safest route.

When I looked at the picture in my hand and looked across from where I was standing, I let out a shout of joy. The peak in the background matched up with the peak in the background in my picture. There were a group of lodge employees hiking below me and I wonder if they heard my exclamations of joy. I continued up a little further and went into a little nook, turned around and there it was "The Skull". It was awesome! This was like finding buried treasure or about as close to it as I think I will ever come.

I took a ridiculous amount of pictures from different angles trying to recreate the photo that was in the picture. The nice part about it also is that it is in a hard enough to reach place that I don't think that people visiting it could destroy the actual skull formation. They could trample down vegetation that looked in pristine condition as I don't think anyone had visited this spot in many years. Feeling overjoyed, I left and went back to the car. I saw the lodge employees but I never told them of my success. You may notice how vague my description is. This is on purpose. I want everyone to experience the joy of finding "The Skull" for themselves. There are few that would put the time and energy necessary, but I will tell you in the end it was very rewarding and worthwhile to discover it for myself.